On this date...

In 1754, in the first engagement of the French and Indian War, a Virginia militia under 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington defeated a French reconnaissance party in southwestern Pennsylvania. In a surprise attack, the Virginians killed 10 French soldiers from Fort Duquesne, including the French commander, Coulon de Jumonville, and took 21 prisoners. Only one of Washington’s men was killed.

In 1776, Washington writes to Major General Israel Putnam in New York. He warns that if intelligence confirms the British fleet is approaching, Putnam must send an express immediately. Washington urges him to press forward with defensive works and to hasten the regiments’ completion of their colors.

In 1787, the Federalist papers—a series of 77 essays defending the proposed new U.S. Constitution and discussing the nature of republican government, written in 1787–88 by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay—were published in book form as The Federalist.

In 1830, the Indian Removal Act was passed by Congress, allowing U.S. President Andrew Jackson to grant Native American tribes western land in exchange for their settlements within the borders of existing U.S. states, from which they would be removed.

In 1851, the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention first met in Akron, Ohio. Mrs. Frances D. Gage, convention president, began the proceedings with a stirring call to arms.

In 1861, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland issued Ex parte Merryman, challenging the authority of President Abraham Lincoln and the U.S. military to suspend the writ of habeas corpus (the legal procedure that prevents the government from holding an individual indefinitely without showing cause) in Maryland.

In 1863, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, made up of free Black men, left Boston to fight for the Union in the Civil War.

In 1892, the Sierra Club was founded in San Francisco by naturalist John Muir.

In 1917, racial strife in East St. Louis, Illinois, occurred when White workers marched through Black neighborhoods, beating people and burning buildings; the state governor called in the National Guard to restore order [1]

In 1918, during the first sustained American offensive of World War I, an Allied force, including a full brigade of nearly 4,000 United States soldiers, captured the village of Cantigny on the Somme River in France from the German enemy.

In 1923, oil was discovered on land owned by the University of Texas in Reagan County. The Santa Rita No. 1 established the Permian Basin as one of the world’s most productive oil regions.

In 1928, the American automobile makers Dodge Brothers, Inc., and Chrysler Corporation merged.

In 1935, John Steinbeck’s first successful novel, Tortilla Flat, was published.

On May 28, 1936, a killer was convicted based on a single horse hair in the rape-murder of Nancy Titterton in New York City.

In 1943, the Office of War Mobilization was established to coordinate production.

In 1947, the Coast Guard announced the disestablishment of all U.S. Coast Guard Merchant Marine Details in foreign ports.

In 1956, US President Eisenhower signed the Agricultural Act of 1956, allowing the government to store post-war agricultural surplus.

In 1957, National League owners voted unanimously to allow the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers to move to San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively, at the mid-season owners’ meeting in Chicago, Illinois.

In 1959, the U.S. Army launched Able, a rhesus monkey, and Baker, a squirrel monkey, aboard a Jupiter missile for a suborbital flight, during which both primates survived.

In 1971, President Nixon ordered John Haldeman to do more wiretapping and political espionage against the Democrats. The orders were recorded on tape.

In 1972, burglars working on behalf of the Nixon White House broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., installing surveillance devices on telephones and taking photos of DNC documents.

In 1977, 165 people were killed when fire raced through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky.

In 1984, on Memorial Day, the only American Unknown Soldier from the Vietnam War was laid to rest at ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC, attended by 250,000, including members of Congress and the international diplomatic community, and Vietnam veterans in fatigues.

In 1984, George Soros founded the Soros Foundation Budapest to help countries free themselves from communism.

In 1996, a US jury convicted President Clinton’s former business partners in the Whitewater Case: James and Susan McDougal, and Jim Guy Tucker, the governor of Arkansas. Tucker was charged with creating a sham bankruptcy to avoid paying taxes on profits from the sale of a cable TV company in which he was a partner. Tucker resigned after the verdict. He briefly reversed his decision, but finally stepped down in July. In 1998, Tucker pleaded guilty to a felony charge of fraud and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors of independent counsel Kenneth Starr.

In 2001, President Bush honored America’s veterans by signing legislation on Memorial Day to construct a World War II monument on the National Mall.

In 2002, the last steel girder was removed from the original World Trade Center site. Cleanup duties officially end with the closing ceremonies at Ground Zero in Manhattan, New York City.

In 2005, Carl Edward Roland, 41, was removed from a crane perched 18 stories above Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood. Roland was wanted by the police in connection with the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Jennifer Gonzalez.

In 2006, San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds hit a 90-mph fastball from the Colorado Rockies’ Byung-Hyun Kim over the center-field fence for his 715th career home run to pass Babe Ruth for the second-most home runs in MLB history. “I knew it was definitely gone,” Bonds says afterward. “There was no doubt.” The Giants lose the game in San Francisco, 6-3.

In 2013, calling it perhaps the biggest money-laundering scheme in U.S. history, federal prosecutors charged seven people with running what amounted to an online, underworld bank, saying that Liberty Reserve handled $6 billion for drug dealers, child pornographers, identity thieves, and other criminals around the globe.

In 2016, A gorilla named Harambe was shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo after a three-year-old boy fell into his enclosure. The incident prompted debates in the United States over how the situation should have been handled and the role of zoos.

In 2019, Johnson & Johnson went on trial in Oklahoma, accused of deceptively marketing painkillers and downplaying risks of addiction, helping create “opioid epidemic”; first of 2,000 cases against US pharmaceutical firms.

In 2020, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz declared a State of Emergency in Minneapolis and activated the Minnesota National Guard after protests over the death of George Floyd in police custody.

In 2025, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade unanimously rules that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority in invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to justify his “Liberation Day” tariffs; the administration immediately appeals.